'Tis the Season!

Let me share a sweet thought with you:

"See that watermelon
Smiling through the fence?
I wish that watermelon it was mine.
Sometimes I think that old folks
Ain't got a little sense
When they leave that watermelon sittin' on the vine.

"Well apples are sweet and peaches are good,

Rabbits so very, very fine,
But give me oh give me,
Oh how I wish you would,
Some of that watermelon smiling on the vine.

"Oh, cornbread is sweet,

Pork chops are good,
Blackeyed peas are mighty, mighty fine.
But I ought to tell you,
I really think I should,
For lickin' good eatin',
Eat a watermelon hangin' on the vine!"

We are currently in the middle of watermelon season.  It is plentiful, inexpensive, and at the peak of quality.  And we love it at our house.  So we have it a lot.

Picking a good watermelon is an art.  It's a skill you have to develop.  You read and hear all kinds of stuff about the tricks to picking a good watermelon.  Some people look for places where bees stung the melon.  Some people say you should look for melons with just the right amount of coloring from where the sun didn't reach on the melon.  Some people thump them and listen for just the right sound, a sound you have to learn to recognize, trial and error kind of thing.  Some people prefer striped melons, others prefer solid green.  Everybody has their own method for picking a good melon.  That even includes just grabbing one, which I think is a very risky proposition.

What has worked best at our house is the thumping method and Brombeere has gotten very, very good at it.  It has gotten to the point that we can go a whole summer and have nearly every melon that comes through the house be a good one, with many being very good.  That is a very happy thing.

Once you get the melon home you have to decide how to prepare it, how to serve it.  There are a number of ways to serve watermelon.  At our house, our favorite is to cut it into bite-sized cubes.

So you cut it open and get started.  And here I feel I must make a confession.  Its  common knowledge that the center of the melon is the sweetest part.  My grandmother, who began her family in the midst of the Great Depression and raised ten kids, and who learned how to make a dollar stretch because she had to, had this thing about watermelons.  If there was any red left at the rind you're being wasteful, even though that is the farthest part from the sweet, sweet center of the melon.  My children all heard about this standard.  Personally I don't think its necessary to cut it quite that close.  Its okay to leave a little red because, frankly, the rind isn't very good at all.

And here is my confession.  When I'm chopping up the melon, a fair amount of the center, the heart of the melon, the sweetest, best part of the melon, never makes it into the serving bowl.

Its like I can't get all the way through the job without sampling it.  Well, you know, you need to make sure its good enough to set on the table, right?

Or maybe you can tell as you're cutting along, that its just not all going to fit in the bowl so you have to reduce the amount that needs to fit in the bowl, right?

Or maybe its simply too good to resist.  I mean, who can wait until all the foods ready, we sit down, and have the blessing?!  Is that even a reasonable expectation!?  Maybe I shouldn't have said anything, now they might not let me cut the watermelon anymore.

Anyway, this time we cut up half a good sized watermelon to have for lunch.  Nearly filled the bowl.

But when lunch was over the bowl was empty enough that it seemed more empty than full.  What a shame to put such a big bowl, which was now more than half empty, in the fridge, taking up all that space.

So, yeah, I moved it into a smaller bowl.  And there were only two of us eating at that meal.

Oh, watermelon is so good.  Its the favorite fruit at our house.  "For lickin' good eatin', eat a watermelon hangin' on the vine!"  Its such a glorious time when its in season and such a sad time when they go out of season each year.  But there's always next year!